


And We’ll Know Why, Just You And I

by luninosity



Series: Oh Boy! Or, Life's Better With A Buddy Holly Soundtrack [5]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Conversations, Emotions, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Negotiation, Laundry, M/M, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 23:25:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt of, <i>a story in which one of them notices bruises on the other one, after sex, and gets all apologetic and worried, and the object of the worry is all, “no, it's all right, I'm fine, and you were totally worth it, let's do it again…” </i>Contains potentially-hurt James and worried Michael, plus some freshly-laundered sheets and honest conversation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And We’ll Know Why, Just You And I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ninemoons42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/gifts).



> Title, opening, and closing lines this time from Buddy Holly’s “True Love Ways” (the song written for his wife). As always, future prompts for this series entirely welcome--I have two more in the works, right now...

  
_just you know why_   
_why you and I_   
_will by and by_   
_know true love ways…_

  
  
The rain splashes, chattering merrily back at the distant grumbles of the thunder; it slips and slides along the gutters and windows, while inside, snug and dry on the sofa, Michael turns a page of his book, and tries to focus on the words.  
  
Focus is surprisingly difficult. He’d been much more relaxed one minute previously, when James had been tucked neatly between his legs, flipping through pages of his own proposed-script pile while Michael went over ancient Irish legends in preparation for the upcoming mythological epic and occasionally read aloud the best bits about cows in order to make James snort with laughter.  
  
His legs miss James. And the sofa’s a little colder.  
  
James, however, had hopped up, a minute ago, glancing at the clock, and had run off to collect the laundry out of the dryer, where their sheets have been patiently spinning, because they’d had to do laundry, because they do have spare sheet sets but these are the warmest and Michael wants James to be warm, at night, in his arms.  
  
They’d had to do laundry because they’d left said sheets rather ruined, the night before, and he’d been too exhaustedly satisfied to do anything other than roll himself and James to one side and curl up and drift off, then; but they’d eyed the bed, in the morning, and had both conceded that, yes, cleaning would likely be appropriate, and appreciated by all parties involved.  
  
James reappears, smothered in armfuls of blue. Pauses to shoot him a smile, fond even through fabric-softener fluff, and then heads off to the bedroom.  
  
Michael watches him all the way down the hall. Looks back at his book, and the remaining page and a half of this particular story.  
  
Eventually, after a fierce internal debate, he finishes the chapter in what for him is record time, makes a few mental notes about heroes and berserker rages and when and why, sticks a bookmark between obliging pages, and then gets up as well.  
  
“Here to help?” James grins at him, blue eyes and irrepressible hair all that’s currently visible over the mound of sheets, and then plops them on the bed and looks at them as if contemplating a dive into the welcoming heap. Michael very nearly tells him to go ahead.  
  
But if they get the sheets on the bed, they can have sex on the bed. Not that Michael won’t enthusiastically have sex with James anywhere, including the bare mattress if necessary; but the sheets are more pleasant, and he wants James to be pleasured.  
  
James fishes around in the folds, comes up with some corners—top sheet, not bottom, so it gets flipped aside—and then finds the correct fitted fabric, shakes it out, eyes Michael around the dark blue expanse with an expression that says he’s heard all of those thoughts and is in complete agreement.  
  
“At least let’s get this one on first, the pillowcases can wait—”  
  
“Who needs the pillows, they’ll end up on the floor anyway—”  
  
James tosses the other end of the sheet his direction, laughing.  
  
And Michael’s heart stops.  
  
“You—are those—your arms—”  
  
“What? Oh.” Sobering, James shakes his sweater back into place, looks at Michael’s face, sighs. “It’s fine. Honestly it is. I only bruise easily, we know that, you know that, you’ve seen me after stunt days—”  
  
“That’s different!” These are bruises from—oh god. From him. From what he’s done to James.  
  
The images crash back like uninvited thunder into the room. The two of them falling into bed, under the happy patter of the rain. James laughing then too, bright gold music ringing out into the night. Gazing up at him, trustingly, in the scatter of pillows, hair curling up like mischievous elf-locks over blue cotton.  
  
James had stretched arms over his head, fingers reaching, flexing, expressive; and they’d both paused as fingertips brushed the headboard, desire and tension humming along bared skin.  
  
He’d said, _we talked about—you said you’d not mind if I—do you want to—_ and then had ended up breathless and tripping over his own half-shed pants when James had nodded, excitement radiating up from those eyes like sunlight over water.  
  
He’d used his belt, securing James to the headboard. They’d not had anything else conveniently at hand.  
  
The bruises echo the loops of leather, around those playful wrists. Dark lines, where James had pulled against the restraints, tugging, twisting, moaning his name. He’d thought they’d been good sounds; certainly James hadn’t asked him to stop, had in fact responded very satisfactorily, with intoxicating eagerness. And Michael’d been intoxicated. Entranced by the sound of that voice, that glorious accent, all ragged and fraying around the edges with need.  
  
He remembers his hands, over the curving span of pale freckled hips. Holding James. Holding James down. Wonders, sickeningly aware of the possibility, whether there’re other bruises, the size of his hands, long fingers leaving blue-black imprints on delicate skin.  
  
His mouth, his teeth, on James’s throat, and lower, over that chest, the nipples he’d toyed with and bitten and pinched until James cried out, eyes closed, head falling back into the pillows in ecstasy.  
  
He’d believed that had been ecstasy.  
  
James never does say no. Not to him. Not to anything Michael wants to do. He knows that; or had known it, a few short days ago, the presentiment whispering across his mind in the back of the movie theater, at that film premiere, wondering whether James would let them bring a prop gun home, concluding that James would never use it on him, would never stand over _him_ and murmur silken words in that fantastical voice.  
  
But James would say yes, if Michael asked for the reverse. Asked for James on his knees, looking up, while Michael trailed the sleek black metal of the mock weapon across his face, and buried a hand in his hair.  
  
Then, it’d been a kind of idle worry, a concern for the future, the next time the situation presented itself and called for discussion. Not irrelevant, but not urgent, either, not when James was holding his hand and smiling.  
  
Hands. His hands _had_ left bruises. He knew they had. He’d been there. His fingers tingle with the memory.  
  
And James hadn’t said no.  
  
“Are you all right?” Eyebrows lift, inquisitive wings over demon-blue eyes. “Come on, the sooner we finish this, the sooner I can go make you dessert for later—”  
  
“…what?”  
  
“It was supposed to be a surprise. Kind of a reward, for you finishing your epic cow-and-berseker-related research. But I thought I maybe ought to tell you now, so you can stop looking at me like—anyway it’s a chocolate confetti torte, or it will be when I finish it. With vanilla whipped cream and chocolate ganache.” James pushes up his sleeves again, obviously unthinking this time, head tipped invitingly to one side. But Michael’s gaze goes right to those tell-tale marks, and the words come out all on their own.  
  
“Are there more?”  
  
“What? Oh, those…Michael…you don’t have to—”  
  
 _“Show me!”_  
  
Those eyes go huge, wider than all the oceans in the world. And Michael flings a hand over his own mouth, too late.  
  
“James—” Through the hand. Hastily, he lowers it. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t trying to shout at you, I—”  
  
He’d seen that almost unnoticeable flinch. All at once he’s very aware that he’s standing right beside the bed; that this is the bed where James still wakes up on occasion gasping for breath, surfacing from nightmares in which a tall faceless shadow stands over him and waits.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” he tries, desperate.  
  
James takes a breath, measured and precise; lets it out. Then walks around to Michael’s side of the pillow-strewn minefield, and reaches out, and collects Michael’s cold hands into his own. “I’m all right. I promise. I want you to believe that, okay?”  
  
“You’re not. You—this—” He squeezes the fingers, but gently. “I hurt you. Why would you say—why didn’t you stop me?”  
  
“Because it genuinely was good, for me.” James squeezes back, eyes not leaving Michael’s face. “Not bad. Good. I liked it. I…like you being a bit rougher, sometimes. Knowing you want me, knowing you want to make me yours, belonging to you…that’s a good feeling. Kind of a turn-on, to be honest.”  
  
The scent of fabric softener and clean laundry meanders lazily through the air. And those eyes are so very blue. So sincere.  
  
“I can show you, if you want.” James shrugs, not letting go of entwined hands. “But you know it’s just my skin being its ridiculously oversensitive self, at least partly, I _know_ you know that, it’s happened before…”  
  
“And I’ve hated it. Every time.”  
  
James blinks, visibly startled. “Really?”  
  
“Yes. James, listen. This…” He turns a hand. Skims one finger, as lightly as possible, along the edge of ominous shadow. “This isn’t good. Not for you. Not for me.”  
  
“…when you say _this_ ,” James echoes, voice suddenly uneven, and Michael says instantly, mentally cursing himself up and down and sideways for good measure, “No, fuck, sorry, sorry, I only meant the physical, the—the bruises, when I—of course you’re good for me, we’re good, I love you. I’m happy. I mean—right now I want to talk to you, we should talk about—but I’m not leaving you, not ever, you think I’d give you up now that I finally get to kiss you?”  
  
At the hint of a smile, venturing out from behind the clouds, he tries, “Besides, you said you’d make something chocolate and decadent for me, I wouldn’t give that up either, you know,” and the smile gets a bit larger.  
  
“I did, yes. Because I love you. And…I didn’t know you felt that way. I’m sorry.”  
  
“You don’t have to be sorry. You just need to tell me. When I’m hurting you. Please tell me to stop, sometimes.”  
  
“But what if I don’t want you to—”  
  
“That’s what I mean!”  
  
“Okay, now I’m confused again.”  
  
“You don’t say no. Not to me. Not about—anything, really.”  
  
“Oh.” James looks at their hands, for a second. Sits down on the bed, in the tangle of warm soft sheets and pillowcases, and tugs until Michael sinks down beside him. “That’s actually not true. I do tell you no. Like when you want to challenge Ian McKellen to a martini-drinking contest, or try to set up Chris and Tom on a blind date just because you think they have on-screen chemistry.”  
  
“I was right about that one, you know. And you don’t—you never say it when it’s important. Or. Not important, but…in here. In bed. When I ask you for things. It’s—you do know you can say no to me, right? James?” He disentangles one hand. Uses it to tip that chin up and get blue eyes to meet his. “I won’t be angry if you say no. I’ll listen.”  
  
“I know you’ll listen.” James focuses on him, surprised. “I was just thinking—you said this was important, right? So clearly I need to be shirtless.”  
  
“Ah…”  
  
There’s a flash of grin, briefly obscured by a sweep of fuzzy sweater, and then James emerges on the other side, messy-haired and intent. “Look. You did ask, so I thought I ought to show you.”  
  
“James—”  
  
“No, I mean it. Really look, go on.”  
  
Michael swallows, hard. Does as instructed.  
  
There are marks, yes. Visible signs of himself, his possession, on James’s body. But they’re…not that bad. Nowhere near what he’s been envisioning.  
  
The faint pinkness lingering at the line of that graceful throat isn’t cruel or vicious; it looks like what it is, the imprint of passionate kisses, the rasp of beard-stubble and friction. The small smudges over freckles at that waist, peeking out above the low waist of complacent jeans, are yellow and green and fading, a night and a morning later, and James looks up at him without any pain or regret at all in those eyes.  
  
James doesn’t say anything, but does collect one of Michael’s hands, very calmly, and sets it gently on the closest hip, fitting exactly into place, the same shape and size, his fingertips falling over those vanishing bruises.  
  
“I’m all right,” James says again, softly, with conviction. “I’d tell you if I wasn’t. I would tell you to stop, honestly I would. I don’t want you to hurt me, and I know you don’t want to hurt me, and I’ll tell you.”  
  
“I love you,” Michael whispers. It’s all he can say.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“You’re amazing.”  
  
“Am not.” James glances at his wrist, the hand still resting atop Michael’s, over his hip. “This…I should’ve told you about those. Afterwards, once I noticed. I was very happily occupied at the time. But I should have said something, this morning. So I am sorry.”  
  
“I’m sorry, too.” And, when James starts to speak, “Not only for those. For—this morning, or ever, if you ever felt like you couldn’t say that—that you couldn’t tell me when—” He has to stop, then. That idea threatens to choke him. Flattens all the words into nothing.  
  
But James is smiling, a little wryly, open and unguarded and almost amused. Overhead, the rain splashes down as if it’s amused too. And the air shifts. Feels like an indrawn breath, wordless comprehension, hope.  
  
“You won’t leave me,” James says, quietly. That’s not what Michael’s expecting, though his reply is instantaneous regardless, and just a touch profane.  
  
James actually laughs, at that. “Yes, thank you…no, what I meant was…I do know that. That you won’t—that you’ll be here. I just—sometimes can’t quite believe it. When I wake up, in the morning, and you’re here, and you kiss me. Or when—when I wake up and it’s not because it’s morning, and you hold me and you _are_ here, when I need you, and I know I’m not the easiest to live with—I know you never asked for all the—the complications. I don’t want to make this more complicated. I don’t want to ask you for more. When you’re already doing so much.”  
  
“James,” Michael manages, after a speechless shocked second, “you’re wrong.”  
  
“I…am?”  
  
“Yes. Sorry. But. I did ask. For all of this. For all of you. You gave me a second chance, and I asked you to come home with me, and I told you I’d always be here for you, and I want to hold you whenever you need me to. I want all your complications. Please. I love you.” He holds his breath. Waits.  
  
He’d thought, hoped, frantically wished, that maybe they were past that. That his own idiocy, months earlier, the unconsidered words that’d cut right to the bone and made James get on a plane and leave the _First Class_ set without saying goodbye, hadn’t left scars after all, or had at the very least long healed.  
  
But he knows better, despite all the futile wishing. Knows that James uses laughter and self-deprecation to cover over a deep-seated belief that no one will ever keep that promise— _I’ll be there_ —when it’s made to him. Knows that even through the smiles and the hand-holding and all Michael’s talk about their future, there’s a place behind blue eyes where James always hears those _other_ words, the ones he’d said unthinkingly on camera, only meaning the projects, the characters, the profession: _you have to move on, to go off to the next film wholeheartedly, you can’t leave anything behind…_  
  
He looks at James’s wrists again. Then can’t, anymore. Some bruises, decades old and newly reinforced, might not ever heal. That’s his fault, too.  
  
“I love you,” James says, and the tone of that voice isn’t what he’s expecting. Not fragile. Not shivering under the weight of loneliness.  
  
It’s affectionate. Lighter. Almost happy.  
  
He chances a glance up, at James’s face.  
  
“Michael,” James says, this time, and leans in and kisses him, wholly unexpected, sweet and swift and warm, heat that lingers even after, sliding all the way down to his toes.  
  
The rain cheers for them, outside.  
  
Michael opens his mouth, but then can’t quite think of any good words to say.  
  
James grins, impishly. Throws both arms around him, topples them back into the pile of sheets, and kisses him hard, eyes dancing as they gaze down at him. Michael, lying in the folds of laundry, ends up breathless and astonished and touching James because he can’t not, all that bare skin and exposed freckles right there on top of him and trembling with joy.  
  
“I believe you,” James says. “I do believe you. When you say that. All of it. And I love you.”  
  
Michael’s the one to initiate the kissing, this time. Ends up murmuring his fervent thank you into the welcome of that mouth, and tangles their legs together. James smiles, into the kiss, and wraps a hand into Michael’s hair.  
  
“Compromise, then?”  
  
“…what?”  
  
“Sorry, am I distracting you? What I just said, about trusting you. I promise you I always will. Completely. With all my bruises. And—”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“Not finished. But feel free to nibble on my ear again, it enjoyed that…”  
  
“Like that?”  
  
“Positively yes. And you…you can trust me, also, all right? When I tell you that I am fine, that you didn’t hurt me, that I want you. Trust me to tell you when to stop. And if I don’t tell you…you can trust that, too.”  
  
“Yes,” Michael says, into the hollow beneath one ear, again as his lips trace the line of that delicious neck, one more time over the beginning explosion of red-gold freckles over a shoulder. “Yes.”  
  
“Yes, then.” James sits up, very purposefully, and starts working hands beneath Michael’s worn t-shirt. Michael sits up too, which has the excellent side effect of tumbling James into his lap, because he has one more question to ask.  
  
“One more question.”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“These. Your arms. You said you should’ve said something earlier. Do they…hurt?” He turns his hand. Catches quicksilver fingers in his own. “Can I do anything to help?” It’s an honest offer. Not out of guilt, not now. But he wants to make this right.  
  
“Oh…” James looks at his hand, cradled in Michael’s longer fingers. Then grins again. “This time, just be careful, I think. Next time…”  
  
“Next time?”  
  
“Oh yes next time. I think it was only a problem of available materials, you know, your belt isn’t exactly soft and forgiving…we could try it with one of your ties. Or scarves. I could approve of us trying this with scarves.”  
  
“Silk,” Michael agrees, once he can talk. “Cashmere. _Expensive_ scarves.”  
  
“Nothing but the best, for you tying me up?”  
  
James is laughing, the eyes sparkling blue, so Michael flips them over and pins James down—carefully—amid all the sheets that’re never going to properly make it onto the mattress now. Kisses him one more time, through the noisy applause of the storm. Informs him, very seriously, nose to nose, “Nothing but the best for you _always_.”  
  
To which James says, contentedly, happily, lying under him all bright-eyed and excited and lifting those hips just to make the point _extra_ clear, “I’ve already got the best, I’ve got you.”

 

  
_sometimes we’ll sigh_   
_sometimes we’ll cry_   
_and we’ll know why_   
_just you and I_   
_know true love ways…_


End file.
